After Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to resist Hitler, he wrote in The Cost of Discipleship (1937) that true forgiveness is always a form of suffering. My brother’s burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot, his natural characteristics and gifts, but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which I now share…. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.3
